


tfw you listen to the dunkirk ost

by kabrox18



Category: Transformers: Universe (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Psychological Horror, god i love these stupid old men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22245775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kabrox18/pseuds/kabrox18
Summary: you know that scene at the end of saving private ryan with the tanks? it's just that but megatron's there. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Relationships: Megatron/Optimus Prime
Comments: 5
Kudos: 17





	tfw you listen to the dunkirk ost

**Author's Note:**

> nothing in the TFU tag? my city now
> 
> i wrote this in weaver's dm and it was literally just me literary-wanking, so

“Captain, sir,” Optimus starts, only to be shushed. He wants to protest, but one of the humans puts a finger to his lips, gesturing outward.

The building they’re in is full of holes. Combat damage, battlefield entropy; the wind whistles through uncaringly and covers whatever the humans think they’re hearing. He leans closer to one blown-out plaster windowsill, closing his eyes to focus.

There. A tiny, faroff noise—a squeaking on top of the sound of the wind, barely audible. He feels himself prickle at the realization, looking down to the humans huddled in a bunch beneath him.

“It’s either one of ours, or one of them,” Stevens murmurs. He looks to the Captain, mouth set in a grim line.

“If it’s one of them, we’re dead within the hour,” Moore replies, swiping his glove across his brow.

“Not if I can help it,” Optimus Prime injects, and they all look to him. A half-dozen pair of weary, dark eyes, turned up at him. He feels their hopelessness, their exhaustion.

“A unit’s never survived an encounter yet. Never. That’s a zero-percent survival rate. If it is one of them,” the Captain says, grasping Moore on the shoulder, “and I think it is—we really are dead within the hour. Nothing we have even slows you aliens down. Not EMP, not sticky bombs, not land mines—nothing.”

“Sir. Tank’s getting closer,” Matthew murmurs, voice lowering. He’s got an arm around Alan, hand fisted in the loose cloth hanging at his ribs. Alan closes his eyes, lowering his head against a fist. Optimus catches him mouthing something, low and reverent.

“O Lord, gift us swiftness and stealth on this day...” he mumbles, never looking up. Optimus respectfully turns his attention back outside; the squeaking’s getting louder. Now there’s tiny pebbles quivering on the ground, shivering and tumbling over each other. He stares at one, dancing and bouncing across a jerked, shouldered-up piece of pavement.

The pebbles get bigger, whole lumps of concrete-conglomerate shuddering at the encroaching sound. Like the very earth is afraid of what’s coming.

“We need to go,” the Captain says, barely above a whisper. “If we want to run, we need to go.”

“Is it worth the effort?” Moore questions, adjusting his rifle on his lap. He leans back, tipping his head to the wall Optimus is flush to.

“I don’t know, anymore. We aren’t learning anything new from them, now. We’ve got no intel—nothing of value.” Optimus feels a particularly heavy breath run through his chassis; it’s laden with dust knocked from the hacked-in-half floor above.

Stevens coughs, muffling it in the crook of his arm and looking panicked for a half-beat. Matthew grabs his sleeve, dragging him to the opposite side of Alan, who’s still appealing to the same unseen force.

The rest huddle up this way, crouching in a tight clump, shoulders hunched against the rumbling running through the ground now. Optimus hunkers lower himself, armor settling protectively.

The squeak’s ever-louder, creeping in on his thoughts, dragging his attention around as he searches for a source. But there isn’t one—it’s bouncing around on the buildings, scattering and coming from everywhere at once. Now there’s a creaking, too. Like metal joints protesting use.

The rumble’s audible now. He can feel it creeping up from the soles of his feet, sensors worrying at his HUD over an earthquake. But this isn’t an earthquake. It’s steady, slow.

A tank’s engine, churning lazily. He feels his earfins prick, and he turns his head carefully, leaning just enough that he can peek out a crack in the wall, shifted open. He can only see across the street this way.

It keeps coming. It’s all the same volume, now, loud and grating and cold. Patient, even. He finds himself gripping the ground in one hand, spark thrumming with anxiety. The humans seem no better off, clutching at each other and breathing shallowly, quietly. Their eyes are wide, and even Alan has stopped talking.

“It’s here,” one mouths, and they look to each other. There’s no plan between them. Just animal-panic. Stevens goes to get up, dragged back by a sudden array of grasping hands, holding him down and clamping over his mouth to silence anything threatening to slip out.

Matthew puts a finger to his lips, silent and foreboding.

The rumbling stops.

Optimus peeks out again. He can’t see anything, but he does here a grating noise—gears failing to mesh, almost. Then a hollow, metal clank. Metal scraping concrete and other metal and another hollow clank. Something like steam or smoke being expelled—heavier than just air.

“Can you see it?” Moore mouths up, almost comical. Optimus shakes his head a tiny fraction. He shifts, slightly, peering out. Still nothing.

Everyone’s radios light up at once, then. Wide eyes get wider and the humans look like hunted petrorabbits—still and silent but knowing death is at the door.

It’s laughter.

Dark, harsh, warbling in the bass-range. Smug, knowing. A predator with cornered prey. Optimus’ head snaps up fast enough he swears it broke something.

“Shit,” one of the humans exhales, soft—inaudible over the ever-present hiss of the wind.

A weighted thump that rattles the same detritus the tank had registers, and then another. And another. Slow, plodding, patient.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” the voice hisses, sly, eager. The thudding grows closer, pauses at the end of the avenue. Optimus peeks out hesitantly, seeing a shadowed figure outside.

He doesn’t need to see the colors, or the shapes, or anything to recognize the twin points of red, hanging amidst occluding dust.

It starts approaching, and he quickly twists back, ripping himself from the crack and clamping vents closed to silence them. The footfalls—because that’s what they are, footfalls—make his spark jump into his throat with every impact.

“Go,” he whispers, jerking his head to the opposite wall. It’s more a mound of rubble than a wall, but they nod and quickly file out, one-by-one. Alan is last, and looks up to him with a flicker in his eyes. Like he wants to say something. He shakes his head, puts his hand up—a good luck gesture?—and hurries off to join his compatriots.

He shuffles over, looking out one last time and feeling everything in him freeze when those red points are on top of him, bright with deadly promise and narrow in glee.

“There you are.”

The wall explodes inward, Optimus to his feet and on his back all in one motion. He’s back up without thinking, throwing himself sideways to dodge a violent swipe that was clearly meant to land.

It gives him a tiny, tiny opportunity, and he lunges. It takes until he sees those red eyes again for him to realize his mistake.

Then he’s on his back again, head and gyros spinning in angry dissonance; Megatron laughs, low and victorious, in the back of his throat. Optimus rolls to avoid the point-blank fusion shot, briefly blinded and deafened by the instant flash-bang one-two that blew a crater where his head had just been. He blinks, clearing away the spots in his vision and getting to his feet, deflecting another punch. His ears are still ringing, a hollow trough in audio input, but he can see Megatron’s ugly mouth working over words. Not english, he notes, the shapes are all wrong.

Input finally returns, slow, and only clear in one side. He’s speaking Kaonite—all guttural and consonant-laden. Optimus narrows his eyes and throws a punch of his own, wincing when he gets flipped over, thrown through the last wall and sending the floor to the ground in heaps of drywall dust and wood splinters and metal beams.

Megatron’s on him in a fuel-pulse, clawing his way through rubble and debris and storming closer, snarling about righteous fury and sick revenge all in the same breath.

They collide again, palm-to-palm, and grapple; Megatron’s shorter, stockier frame shoves him back, too strong and huffing exhaust-steam. He looks like a monster, breathing smoke through his fangs and eyes blazing with hate.

Megatron throws him. Far. He’s tumbling across the ground, dizzy and half-deaf and tired and afraid for the humans as he lands in some half-crumple, half-sprawl.

“Do you ever shut up?” he asks, coughing and flushing his vents of dust. Megatron stops short, eyes spinning out a fraction; words die on his tongue, and Optimus manages to get himself half-upright. Everything hurts.

He’s probably broken a dozen major components—the warlord hit hard. He gropes across his side, feeling scraped-to-bare metal and exposed wiring. He’d ripped something off.

“Only when you listen,” Megatron snaps, finally in english. It’s quicker through his translation protocol, at any rate, and he looks up with blue defiance burning in his gaze. He’s approaching, casual again. Lazy, even.

“What do you want?” he asks, hoping to catch him off guard again. Even for just a second, so he can get to his feet.

“I want your head on my wall,” he says, and wraps a beveled hand round Optimus’ neck, dragging him up with all the steely, immutable strength that made him so infamous.

“Unlikely,” he retorts, vents stuttering open-shut across his torso. Heat warnings flick across his HUD along with the rest of the damage report coming down in a blizzard of glyphs.

“Is it?” Megatron asks, inclining his head. Daring him to try something. Optimus squirms, eyes flicking to the side; he’s hanging over the edge, a cliff he didn’t notice that plunged over a wrenched steel railing and down a concrete wall into the ocean. Jagged rocks reach up like hungry jaws, slavering with foam for the Prime.

“You know it won’t kill me,” he says, suddenly, and turns his gaze back to Megatron. Even as it starts to fritz out around the edges; everything’s thrown in rainbow contrast and shadow.

“I’m quite sure it will,” he replies, deadpan. Optimus looks down, to his mouth; full of sharp-thick teeth made to crush and tear. He reflexively snaps a fist up, landing a hit and sending Megatron scrambling back, clutching his face in surprise. It wasn’t a particularly strong hit—certainly not enough to knock one of those solid teeth out.

He falls, free for his height and only stopping when he catches the edge with his fingers. His arm jolts, angry and painful from the impacts and yanking. He can’t completely stifle the small cry of pain, and he looks up to a pair of eyes glaring down at him, twin promises of pain written in crimson.

Energon’s threading down his chin, flecking out when he spits down at the Prime.

“Hardly worth my time, now,” he sneers, and Optimus feels a small flicker of pride that he split one of those ugly white gums open in a beading point of cyan. A HUD ping tells him the squadron got away safely, and he feels like he can breathe again, cycling ocean air through his chassis in relief.

He looks up again right as Megatron lifts a foot, broad and flat, and stomps on his hand. He screams, nearly letting go, and chokes on noise when the sharp edge of his foot grinds down.

“You certainly seem insistent on holding on for being so confident that you won’t die, Prime,” he says, grinning again.

“Keep going,” he snarls in retort. “Your hideous mug makes for good target practice at this angle.”


End file.
